Welcome to Analytics Checkup by Loves Data which provides resources for ensuring you are getting the most out of Google Analytics. The data collected in your Google Analytics account is vital to determining the health and wellbeing of your website, as well as understanding the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. These resources will help you see if your Google Analytics account has a clean bill of health, so you know that your business decisions are based on reliable data.

Using a Google Analytics Checklist

It doesn’t matter if you are installing Google Analytics for the first time or maintaining an existing account – it’s important to regularly check your implementation and configuration. Using a Google Analytics checklist can help you identify problems that might be preventing you from having a full set of reliable data for reporting and analysis.

We recommend bookmarking this page and checking your implementation every few months to ensure you continue to collect accurate data.

Resources:

• Google Analytics checklist

Auditing Google Analytics Tags

So far we have looked at checking data which is already within your Google Analytics reports. It is also important to ensure that data is being collected correctly in the first place. One way to do this is using Google’s Tag Assistant which is an extension available for Chrome.

Once you have the extension enabled you can audit the tracking code that is implemented within a particular page that you have loaded. Tag Assistant will tell you if the tracking code on the page is firing correctly or if there are any issues that need to be addressed. It will also provide you with suggestions, like using Google Tag Manager to manage multiple tags.

Resources:

• Get the Tag Assistant Chrome browser extension

• Google’s support page about Tag Assistant

Google Analytics Diagnostics

Diagnostics is a new feature available within Google Analytics that can help you quickly identify issues with your Google Analytics data and configurations. It works by analyzing your configurations and data as it is processed into your reports, if it notices something strange, like a goal that has stopped reporting conversions, conflicting filters, missing tags, it will notify you of the potential issue.

Resources:

• Google’s post about Google Analytics Diagnostics

Automating with Google Drive

Google Analytics data can be pulled into a Spreadsheet within Google Drive, allowing you to streamline your Google Analytics checks. Once the data is pulled into the Spreadsheets in your Google Drive, you can customize ways to visualize your Analytics data, so you’re looking at the metrics that matter to you and your business goals. You can also create Custom Reports.

Resources:

• Use Supermetrics to automate your reporting (affiliate link)

• Get the Add-on for Google Sheets

Campaign Tags

Measuring your custom marketing initiatives is a critical component of any Google Analytics implementation. When done correctly and consistently, campaign tagging is an easy and incredibly effective method of measuring your inbound marketing efforts. Only inbound links to your website should be campaign tagged, never internal links on your website. Apart from using campaign tags on as many inbound links as possible, other best practices include using consistent tag naming conventions. Remember that differences in formatting (like changes in capitalization) will create unique tags and can complicate your data.

Resources:

• Google’s URL builder for campaign tags

• Tracking marketing campaigns

More Resources

Visit the Loves Data blog for more articles covering Google Analytics topics and view our courses, including our Google Analytics course.